Sir Terry Farrell has swapped skyscrapers for mews houses, at the birthplace
of 'The Secret Garden’

Over nearly 50 years, Sir Terry Farrell has designed every kind of building you could name. Offices and railway stations, aquariums and airports. His MI6 headquarters at Vauxhall star in James Bond films. At 441 metres, Farrell’s KK100 Tower in Shenzhen, China, is the tallest building ever designed by a British architect. In London, his firm is leading the Earl’s Court and Nine Elms redevelopments. Their métier is big-budget, large-scale flagship projects.

It is surprising, then, to find Farrell, 75, turning his energies toward a small country estate near Rolvenden in Kent. Here he has set about transforming a slightly rundown part of an Edwardian estate into five sumptuous mews houses, arranged around a series of courtyard gardens.

“It’s a first for me,” he says, laughing at how unlikely it sounds. “Thirty years ago, I did quite a lot of social housing, but don’t think I have done anything quite like this.”

An unusual project, then, but Great Maytham Hall is an unusual house. Designed in 1909 by Sir Edwin Lutyens, with gardens by Gertrude Jekyll, the main house is one of the finest Edwardian buildings in Kent, if not Britain. The estate also has a literary pedigree. Frances Hodgson Burnett lived here from 1898. Working outside one day, she noticed a wooden door hiding beneath some undergrowth on a wall. Behind it lay a garden, built in 1721 but neglected and overgrown. Hodgson Burnett brought it back to life. The experience inspired The Secret Garden, still a beloved classic.

Sadly the book was not published until 1915, by which time Lutyens had redesigned everything, concealing the door with a pigeon house. It is partly to protect the current house from any such future situations that Farrell became involved.

“I have been involved in the restoration of the whole estate,” he says. “I was drawn by a combination of Lutyens, who was then one of the greatest architects in the world, Jekyll and Hodgson Burnett. Between them, the house was one of the great venues of that period. The Churchills and Asquiths of the day would have visited.”

Now for the good mews: the coach houses in Kent are for sale through Knight Frank

Farrell’s design has tried to stay in keeping with this tradition. “It is not the moment to go for an inventive 'wow factor’ modern design,” he adds. “It is about a close reinterpretation of the existing structure. There is something fundamental about the idea of an enclosed courtyard space. The word 'paradise’ comes from the Spanish 'paradisa’, which means walled garden. These spaces mark a heyday of Englishness in the Edwardian era.”

The sale of the five new mews houses will help to ensure the long-term preservation of the site. Farrell hopes they might point towards a solution for Britain’s more general housing shortage.

“I believe in infilling our towns and cities, extending what’s there. This house is only a microcosm of what’s going on around Britain. There are many myths around, that our cities are full. But London isn’t full. We’re adding 7,500 homes at Earl’s Court, on what used to be railway and industrial land. It is better to reinforce existing communities than to create new areas. The South East is a success story. We should be encouraging it. London could be twice as dense as it is now. Yet so many applications are delayed by planning regulation.”

Despite this, and his experiences in China, however, Farrell says we shouldn’t necessarily be copying everything we see in the Far East.

“You have to be careful,” he says. “China have a dictatorial system. It is an ancient empire enjoying an amazing boom, and expressing itself in skyscrapers. Maytham Hall represents the peak of British Empire, our love of architecture and landscape, and of building houses in tune with nature.”

The new homes have plenty of traditional charms. Yet they are also modern, fit for the time-pressed commuter. Simon Biddulph, of Knight Frank, agrees. “With their location close to Ashford International Station, buyers of these homes are likely to use the rail links to France or London,” he says. “The estate has wonderful formal gardens, and leading from those, great walks in the surrounding countryside.”

Taking the best of the old to make something new: a quintessentially British architectural approach. You suspect Sir Edwin Lutyens would still be proud of Great Maytham Hall.

The coach houses at Great Maytham Hall are for sale through Knight Frank, from £495,000 (01892 515035; Knight Frank)